Because so many of you are bored on a Monday morning...

[baratron]

How utterly annoying! You can't make an lj-cut in the middle of a poll - I'd wanted to do it after the first question, so people would have some idea what the poll's about.

Most of these questions are "choose one from the above", the other is "check all that apply". I've tried to cover all the options I can think of - if you want to say more, please continue in comments!
[Poll #67529]


Something random I thought of while compiling this poll (and yes, this is the random triviality I promised on Friday) - in American English, the word "check" is used as a verb to mean "make a cross in the box that applies". (In the UK, we usually tick boxes, not cross them - and I don't think "check" is used in this context - except by Brits like me who have been exposed to US culture too much on the internet). Also in American English, the game that we call "draughts" is called "checkers". In this game, you move circular discs around a board with a grid-pattern of boxes. Now, how come when you "check" a box, you put a cross in it, but when you play "checkers" you put a circle in it?

Yes, I said it was trivial.

Comments

[griffen.livejournal.com]

A check mark (which is kind of like a cockeyed, upside-down number 7) has nothing to do with the game of checkers.

Checkers is called that because of the checkerboard pattern of the board it's played on.

Clear as mud, eh?

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Isn't that a bit recursive? Checkers is played on a checkerboard, therefore it is called checkers?

Damn recursion (http://www.copyleft.net/images/products/252/full_299_front.jpg).

[griffen.livejournal.com]

No, simple logic. Call it based on what it's played on. The board is checkered, therefore the game is called checkers. Simple enough.

Sorry.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

NLVD playing havoc with communication again. I was being silly, and I don't think the sticking-out-tongue smiley was enough to make that obvious to you.

Re: Sorry.

[griffen.livejournal.com]

Er. Yes. I think I'll go hide now.

The real story of the baratron!

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Contrary to what some people believe, I've never used "baratron" as a nickname. It's in no way, shape, or form my name - it's just my login name. And so I have no desire to have people shout "Baratron!" at me in the street, and I do occasionally wish I could change it. The only logical thing to change it to, though, would be "helen-louise". And I'm not sure I want to be quite that easy to find.

A baratron, for those who care, is an absolutely horrendous piece of equipment used to torment students in physical chemistry laboratories. If you value your life and/or sanity, do not participate in Temperature Programmed Desorption of Ammonia. You have been warned.

The complex answer is that it is a registered trademark of MKS (http://www.mksinst.com/product.html), who are quite probably a perfectly reliable company. It probably wasn't the baratron's fault that that experiment caused meeping and myself to explode in a fit of surreality. It was probably a combination of the dodgy glassware which wasn't sealed tightly enough, the dodgy vacuum pump, the dodgy pirahna gauge (sorry, Pirani gauge), the dodgy ammonia cylinder,the dodgy heating thingy and the dodgy zeolite. Plus the wrong sort of air in the laboratory, and the wrong sort of demonstrators. But it was a truly frightening experience. And it (http://www.timpope.btinternet.co.uk/baratron.htm) led to us developing a truly bizarre (http://www.timpope.btinternet.co.uk/misc.htm) sense of humour (http://www.timpope.btinternet.co.uk/strange_animals.htm), and guaranteed that we'd either be friends for life or never speak to each other again.

(The links on meeping's website there have me exploding with laughter every time I view them. If they do not do the same for you, please adjust your surreality buffer and try again).

Re: The real story of the baratron!

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I first knew you as "astral alice" - have you abandoned that nick?

bootpunk came up with "ciphergoth" at November 2000 Whitby, after I'd returned from FSE 2000. Not long afterwards, I started using IRC, and I tried using "PaulCrowley" as a nick since that was how I was known everywhere, and it didn't work at all - it clearly wasn't the IRC way. So I remembered bootpunk's suggestion, and started using it as my nick. Purchasing the domains followed rapidly...

Re: The real story of the baratron!

[barakta]

Yay to insane chemistry! I found the ppl on chemistry course to be much more friendly than on my current course; and I am sure it is due to the insanity of labs. I miss labs now I loved labs, shame I hated the rest of it.

As to Baratron, its scarily close to my own LJ nick which I know amused me. I will actually happily answer to barakta, as JenniYockney would confirm she calls me barakta all the time - what i do hate tho is people calling me barak, cos thats just WRONG. I know what you mean about not wanting ppl calling you your nick tho, I used to be cheshirecat because i couldn't think of anything else.

Ach well at least my first nick wasn't 'screw-driver' as a rather unfortunate friend of mine confessed to, I had appropriate hysterics and decided even at 15 that was unforgivable.

I will re-view those links in the morning 5am is no time for being surreal, chemistry ended an hour ago. (This is due to renaming of the times in the middle of the night to sensible things such as:-

03:00 = chemistry
04:00 = physics
05:00 = maths
06:00 = jogging (sick ppl)
07:00 = unnamed
08:00 = P.E (more energetic ppl doing exercise at 8am)
09:00 = Management (I had 9am mgt seminars which were evil).

Suffice to say the logic is something along the lines of my inability to do chemistry unless drunk and/or at 3am, same applies for physics and maths.

Talking of 5am, sleep!
Night
Natalya

[36.livejournal.com]

Hmm I don't seem to be able to fit my username into the options you give. A whole section on numbers and you don't offer "it's my favourite number"?

Gah!!

[baratron.livejournal.com]

You cannot edit a poll once it has been made. (http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=69)

Sorry :( Meant to put that in, but forgot. I've been carrying that poll around in my head for at least a week before I acquired enough arsedness points to type it in.

I bet most people who have numbers in their names would've picked that, too!

[adjectivegail]

i found 'Asrana' in David & Leigh Eddings' Polgara the Sorceress. back in about 1998 i was looking for a username for something online, and remembered her as being a rather feisty and fun little character. i've stuck with her ever since, and there's only been two occasions, over the years, when i haven't been able to register online with the name.

[the-maenad.livejournal.com]

Didn't answer the first two as none of the answers fitted, but LJ doesn't seem to mind you leaving some blanks, bless it.

the_maenad stems from dmwcarol who registered the domain slut.org.uk when she still worked for an ISP and offered all her friends accounts there. Of course Simon and I had to take her up on the offer -- I'm maenad@slut.org.uk and Simon's feline@etc.

Then when I needed an LJ name maenad had gone, but the_maenad hadn't -- I wouldn't have stuck a number on the end, I think. I nearly went for grebbsy instead, a long-term alter-ego nickname thing.

A maenad is, of course, a pagan woman suffering from divinely-inspired drunken madness, which I think describes me to a T, don't you?

[mjl]

well my LJ username is pretty obvious...

the check/tick issue has been discussed here where I work for our (internationally distributed) forms... we've got a "negative option" box, and the transatlantic confusion between ticks and checks was a bit of an issue and some people ended up not indicating what they intended to indicate. it now just says "please mark this box if..."

[redbird]

I started using "Redbird" as a nickname on ElderMOO, and there are a few people from there who call me by that. I'm nicknamed after my first tattoo.

[elfgeek.livejournal.com]

I made up elfgeek, because I was going to be the Christmas elf at the Secret Santa party. Then I thought about what *kind of* a specific elf I was. And hey presto - there was my user name!

[geminigirl]

I put an "x" or a check mark in the box, I don't put a cross in it.

Sometimes the instructions are given as "Mark an x in the box with the most appropriate answer" or something like that.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Ah - that's like what do you call the Playstation buttons? Everyone agrees about the 'triangle' and 'square' buttons, most people call the circular one 'circle' (though a few weirdos call it 'oh'), but no one is quite sure whether the other one is pronounced 'ecks' or 'cross'.

I get very confused when people start talking about the 'cross button', because it seems to me that they are talking about 'pressing buttons' in the sense of making people angry!

[geminigirl]

I'd call it the "X" button. Not the cross button...you cross a t or a street or an enemy, you make someone cross when you annoy them, or, crosses are Christian symbols.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I think "It's from a book" needs to have been an option, since you're up to two of us now. :)

[nolly.livejournal.com]

Make that three. I've used Menolly online for about 10 years now. The full version wass taken when I finally jumped on the LJ bandwagon, so used a shortened nickname, which delayra gave me. A lot of people do call me Menolly or Nolly offline, mostly at cons. I put Menolly on my badges because there are a lot of people with my actual name, and it gets confusing.

[kiya]

If your more detailed-ly curious about the origin of my username, I wrote about it here a while back.

[ceno.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of the cenobytes/cenobites in the Hellraiser movies so I originally called myself that online, but people ended up shortening it just to ceno, and so the name stuck. Pretty boring really :)

[nmc.livejournal.com]

Moooooooooooooooooo!

And that's all I have to say on the subject.

[narenek.livejournal.com]

YOu are also missing the "Borrowed from some fictional character" option.

But you already knew this as you were there when I started using it.